As for one of the replies to this story that nobody would pay $10 a month for downloading legit services…. I have the answer that nobody either wants to hear or wants to think about on the isp side because it would add more work for them.

Any isp could do this and settle 100% of the problems:
If you transfer more than 2gb down or up in a month you pay an extra $1
If you transfer more than 10gb down or up in a month you pay an extra $5
and an extra $1 per 2gb there after.

Ok, yes, it would cost us more but #1 it solves the question of IF the artists get paid or not because the isp could take (and it would have to be required by law that 100% of the money NOT go to the isp) the money and drop it into a single fund – that fund would go 33% to the software companies, 33% to the Movie industry and 33% to the music industry. Ok I’ll be fair, 5 cents out of every dollar would goto the isp’s for processing fees.

They would LIKELY make more money that way than any other concept I’ve heard to date. Yes it would be ugly but what choice would the end users have but to pay unless they canceled their broadband lines? This would cost people like me alot being that I download the latest linux iso’s when they come out, to add to my LEGAL Direct Connect share, but I dont really care – at the point the isp’s start collecting for it, THEN we could download and share whatever we wanted and it would be legal, everyone would be happy, and the story would be closed and THEN THE GOVT COULD MOVE ON TO REAL IMPORTANT PROBLEMS and less on these stupid issues that a GOVT should never have to think about…

Just my 15 cents.

_-Jile-_

You can get better quality by recording to cassette from the radio, oftentimes.

Maybe for $10 per year, you could get a large amount to subscribe. But unless you are giving most people CD quality tracks, forget it. This is just the same as sharing Albums/CD’s/Tapes that has happened in the past under fair use.

Today, they need to give up the ghost of living off the avails of musicians. Middlemen are going to die out, and actually have to do some real work for a change.

The industry is changing; just as anyone can now be a half-assed sound engineer with digital equipment, so can anyone rip audio tracks from their friends CD’s and make copies.

They need to realize their days are numbered, and no amount of lawsuits will ever destroy it, just as the betamax didn’t die (it merely became the industry standard, with VHS supplanting the home standard), neither will digital audio go away from suing a bunch of individuals.

I wonder if Wells Fargo had had the wherewithal (and if the politicians of the day had had the same lack of ethics and foresight) to thwart the spread of automobiles in the early 20th century whether we’d all be riding in stagecoaches even to this day.

Or even had there been a powerful and wealthy bank tellers’ union, would we still be lining up with Mary Lou to access our bank accounts every Friday afternoon?

Where is the “inventor of the internet” to help the cause of technological advance NOW?